An Oklahoma court recently ruled against an attempt to create a Catholic charter school, in a case that might eventually find its way to the federal Supreme Court and set important national precedent. But Tal Fortgang argues that Jews should nonetheless focus on creating such educational institutions of their own:
Jewish charter schools (JCSs)—publicly funded but independently operated K–12 schools teaching Jewish and secular subjects—would address many of the American Jewish community’s most vexing problems. JCSs avoid the “tuition crisis” that has put Jewish day schools out of reach for middle-class Jews and forced schools to rely on massive donations. They provide an alternative to public schools where Jews have traditionally thrived but feel increasingly unwelcome because of the rise of DEI programming and concurrent anti-Israel orthodoxy. And JCSs in fledgling communities would have the salutary effect of allowing Jews to start branching out geographically, easing the pressure to live in expensive neighborhoods.
Such a project, Fortgang argues, would also entail Jews changing their attitudes to the Constitution itself, and the debate over whether it should primarily function to separate completely between political and religious institutions, or to encourage the flourishing of a variety of religious institutions. Until now, American Jews have overwhelmingly taken the former view, while Fortgang believes they should endorse the latter.
[O]ne thing separationism did not do is what American Jews . . . had counted on it to do: foster pluralistic coexistence. We should stop expecting it to do that or hoping that, suddenly, it will. Separationism is not pluralism. It is closer to the opposite, because it wrongly suggests that we address the problem of coexistence by leveling down—that is, trying to achieve equality by excluding certain forms of argumentation, specifically pushing faith-based ideas out of the public square. We should instead commit to leveling up, encouraging all voices to speak up, thereby allowing Americans to persuade and be persuaded.
More about: American Jewry, Hebrew charter schools, Jewish education, U.S. Constitution